Parliament to seek authorities’ opinions on prickly education bill

The parliamentary national progress committee has decided to seek the suggestions and opinions of authorized institutions for the new bill on education, which seeks to ban unregistered teachers from working in the Maldives.

Lawmaker of Baarashu Constituency and the committee’s chair Ibrahim Shujau stated that the bill must be perfected as the education sector greatly involves the interests of the people .

According to Shujau, senior officials of Ministry of Education, Ministry of Family and Gender, Teachers’ Association, Maldives National University, Maldives Polytechnic and school principals will be presented to the committee during the first week of coming March to seek their suggestions.

The committee also unanimously agreed to complete the bill’s review before the end of March and forward it to the parliament floor.

The bill, lobbied by lawmaker of Funadhoo Constituency Ali Saleem, states that all teachers working in the Maldives must be registered in the “Teachers Registration Council”. Hence, unregistered teachers will not be allowed to practise teaching in the island nation.

Other important points of the bill include that the council should be established within one month of the ratification of the bill. The bill also states that the policy for issuing teaching license should be publicized within a year. All teachers must be registered and receive a license within a six month period.

The obligations of the Teachers Registration Council include maintaining professional standards of teachers, creating a monitoring mechanism, upgrading the quality of education provided and keeping the records and certificates of teachers.

Moreover, the council must assure that all teachers are well disciplined and complete annual professional development programs.